Two Star Ledger set up stories and the details of the EPA plan have yet to emerge - Senator Lautenberg is praising the plan - yet how do we know that it's a positive development???

My spin detector meter is pinned.

What happened to the NJ DEP cleanup plan announced a few years back because EPA was too slow and too soft on the big polluters? See:NEW JERSEY SUES THREE COMPANIES FOR DISCHARGING AND DELAYING CLEANUP OF HIGHLY TOXIC DIOXIN IN THE LOWER PASSAIC RIVER - Directs Companies to Fund Cleanup Plan for Most
Concentrated Areas of Dioxin Contamination in the Riverhttp://www.state.nj.us/dep/newsrel/2005/05_0134.htm

The pictures in the Ledger story also mislead readers. Very few places where DEP has issued fish and shellfish consumption advisories are actually posted with warning signs.

Similarly, many toxics sites are not fenced and posted with warning signs.

I smell a cover story to avoid criticism of NJ DEP walking away from their own state level Passaic River cleanup plan and litigation strategy. See:

Passaic River Cleanup Litigation
To pursue the cleanup of toxic dioxin contamination in the Newark Bay Complex, the Fiscal 2007 Budget will provide an amount sufficient to cover legal and expert services,investigative expenses, and other associated costs. For more than 20 years, Occidental Chemical and its predecessors knowingly discharged a highly toxic form of dioxin, pesticides, and other chemicals into the Passaic River from their Newark facility. The environmental and economic damage this pollution has inflicted on the state includes increased cancer risks from consuming blue claw crabs and higher costs to dredge the New York Harbor's navigational channels.http://www.state.nj.us/treasury/omb/publications/07bib/pdf/bib.pdf

The timing of this is also very suspicious.

Both EPA and NJ DEP need good news to recover from the recent damning Report by the EPA Inspector General - a story than ran page one across NJ this week: see:

By way of illustration: suppose newspapers covered a scathingly critical National report on Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) failures on airline safety, and just a few days later the local FAA office announced a safety plan at Newark airport. Obviously, everyone would connect the dots and see the spin and manipulation.